The school shooting that killed a 15-year-old boy today will undermine the sense of security of adolescents and schoolchildren across the GTA, according to experts in student violence.

The school shooting that killed a 15-year-old boy today will undermine the sense of security of adolescents and schoolchildren across the GTA, according to experts in student violence.

"It shakes them. Their sense of security is destroyed," said James Allan Fox, a professor of criminal justice at Northeastern University in Boston and author of 16 books, including Will to Kill, which has a section on school shootings.

"Obviously it's traumatic, not just to that particular school and community but the whole area. If it can happen here, it can happen anywhere," he said.

Dr. Marleen Wong, director of crisis counselling and intervention services for the Los Angeles Unified School District said the challenge for counsellors and parents will be to identify those students who are at the greatest risk of psychological trauma.

It's called a triage: Those who witnessed the violence are most at risk, followed by those who knew the shooter or the victim. Then it will be counsellors' responsibility to help those who have a history of violence.

"Trauma in the present has a ripple to the past," she said. Parents should watch their child for change of behaviour, nightmares and a fear of going back to school.

"The good news is that 75 per cent of children, with good support, do fairly well after the first week or two. They may be anxious every now and again but they do fairly well," she said. "But if they continue to have anxiety – not able to sleep at night, not wanting to go to school – if these symptoms persist or if they continue to dwell on the incident or have flashbacks or uncontrolled obsessive thoughts about it, these are children who need a crisis assessment."

Often parents will exacerbate the situation by trying to keep their kids at home. But Wong said that letting potentially traumatized children have the run of the house can be disastrous.

"Staying at home isn't the safest thing to do because parents not at home have to work. You might find students wandering around the streets or getting into trouble with friends, and being in situations where they might be traumatized more. School is the best place for them to be in, especially as they have these enhanced resources for crisis counselling," she said.

While many parents complain of lockdowns, and of not being able to check on their kids for long periods of time, she said it's the safest way of dealing with school shootings. Lockdowns are the only way to keep track of kids, prevent them from panicking and to track down potential shooters.

The best thing a parent can do is to listen to their kids, and to find out as much information from the school as possible as to whether crisis counselling is available and what additional security is being put in place to make kids feel safe returning to the classroom.

"Parents should make sure that their kids are comfortable and safe. This might be a time when they don't go out with their friends so much, that they stay home and really have time with the family together," she said.

Often, children feel anxiety when they don't know what happened.

Fox said that school shootings tend to fall into one of two categories: Either they're rampages by people who are targeting the school in general, or the shooter targets a specific person or people. "Usually the perpetrator is someone who feels victimized. Generally it's an act of getting even," Fox said.

Unfortunately, he adds, it's not uncommon to see school shootings among people this young.

"The school shooters tend to be white kids in small towns in rural areas who identify with other white kids in small towns in rural areas and they sort of see their own experience and concerns and grievances in the actions of others. They see others who go on rampages in other schools as heroes. They're heroes because they got even with all the students and teachers and not only that, they're famous for it."

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